


riding the wave

by achilleees



Series: Chuck was injured instead of Herc [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, Minor Character Death, Spoilers, Translation Available, heavy use of italics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 13:33:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achilleees/pseuds/achilleees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say you never really know a guy till you break his face with your fist.</p><p>Okay, they don’t really say that, but fuck it all, they should.</p>
            </blockquote>





	riding the wave

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [乘风破浪](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1463959) by [yuki812](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuki812/pseuds/yuki812)
  * Translation into Русский available: [riding the wave](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4601808) by [KittyKate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyKate/pseuds/KittyKate)



> Ok this is like ALL SPOILERS so know that. Also it's slight AU, you will understand when you get there.
> 
> And I stole a line straight out of Captain America because I could not think of a way to phrase it better than they did, whoops.
> 
> Unbetaed and written hastily, so feel free to critique.
> 
> [Chinese translation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1463959) done by yuki812.
> 
> [Amaaazing art](http://lokefanart.tumblr.com/post/67955452673/things-you-find-in-your-drunk-sketches-folder-i) done by lokeloke (NSFW).

They say you never really know a guy till you break his face with your fist.

Okay, they don’t really say that, but fuck it all, they _should_.

The point stands.

 

 

Chuck Hansen is the most arrogant, conceited son of a bitch Raleigh’s ever met. Actually, son of a bitch ain’t quite right, because his father’s a good guy and by all accounts his mother was practically an angel, so maybe he’s just a bitch.

He’s got some goddamn pretty lips, though.

They’re prettier after they’ve been split, blood streaking the back of his hand where he swiped it across his mouth. Raleigh nurses his bloody knuckles and represses the urge to punch him again, because for just a second there, right before the moment of impact, he swears he saw something like _respect_ flash through the little brat’s eyes.

 

 

Raleigh doesn’t like feeling useless, for obvious reasons.

When the other three teams are suiting up and he and Mako are grounded, it’s about as bad as it’s ever been. He could be out there, he could be helping, but instead he’s here because he couldn’t hold himself in line. Fuck.

He hunches over, elbows on his knees, head hanging. That’s when two furry little paws enter his field of vision and a warm, rough tongue swipes across his fingers. Raleigh looks up. “Hey, Max,” he says, smiling despite himself.

Max looks up at him, all lolling tongue and big, sweet eyes.

“At least you like me,” Raleigh says. He scratches Max behind his ears, which sends the bulldog into near-paroxysms of joy. “I had a dog like you, once. Well, Yancy did. We had to give him up when we were selected for the program. I hope his owner is as good to him as that little shit Hansen is to you.”

Max pants happily up at him, tail wagging.

Raleigh looks up after a minute and finds a suited-up Chuck watching him from a few feet away, wearing a queer expression. He thinks about apologizing for – a couple things, really, but…

“You kind of are a little shit,” he says instead.

Chuck’s eyes go narrow. If he were a dog, his hackles would be rising.

Raleigh looks back down at Max, still rubbing him behind the ears as he says evenly, “But you’re a damn good fighter and it makes me feel better about the city’s safety, having you out there protecting it. Good luck.”

He doesn’t look up, so he has no idea how Chuck responds to this. It’s a minute before Chuck moves, and he doesn’t say anything, just walks away with a snap of his fingers and a, “C’mon, Max.”

Max trots away after him.

Raleigh watches them go, thinking, well… It could have gone worse?

 

 

Raleigh doesn’t know what it is about Chuck.

There’s the way he fills out a t-shirt, of course, straining along the line of his shoulders, tight across his pecs. There’s the cocky flash of his smile, the spark of passion in his eyes that so many people are now lacking.

There’s the way he loves his dog, wholeheartedly, endlessly. If he can love a dog so much, Raleigh wonders how much he could love a person. Of course, since he loves _himself_ so much, Raleigh wonders if he could ever love anyone else.

But then there’s the way he doesn’t even know what it means to give up, so much that the idea of someone else surrendering to their own inevitable destruction is deserving of scorn.

Chuck may be a conceited jerk who isn’t worth his time, but that doesn’t mean Raleigh can stop thinking about him for any spare second that isn’t spent in or around Gipsy Danger. Doesn’t mean Raleigh could even begin to know how.

 

 

 _Please,_ Raleigh begs mentally as he’s getting suited up with Mako, _please let us make it in time._

Striker Eureka is dark and still and isolated in the water, and panic makes Raleigh’s heartbeat skyrocket out of control, enough that Tendo asks him if he’s okay over the comm because his vitals are spiking dangerously.

He can’t answer, only because he’s having trouble breathing.

But then twin flares light up the sky, and Raleigh can breathe again. He would reply to Tendo, but Mako’s already doing it for him. “He’s fine, we’re both fine,” she tells base, and then to Raleigh, “They’re both fine.”

She knows, of course, who he’s really worried about, because she’s in his head, she knows him better than anyone except Yancy ever has, she can read him like an open book. And that’s why she repeats it, heavy with intonation, “They’re both fine.”

And he loves her, in that moment, for all of the things that they’ll never have to say.

 

 

As it turns out, all you have to do to get respect from Chuck (not that he’d like, admit it, but still) is nearly kill yourself mutilating the two biggest Kaiju Raleigh has ever seen.

It’s really Mako who deserves the credit, because that stunt with the sword was nothing less than remarkable, but when Raleigh looks through the crowd of people and sees that look in Chuck’s eyes, like he’s actually _seeing_ Raleigh for the first time, well…

He’s not about to say anything to take that away, is all.

 

 

It’d be nice if Chuck showed his respect like Mako does, with a sort of muted subservience, a willingness to listen for even a second to what anyone else has to say, but that’s not his style and Raleigh knows it.

But fuck, is he a stubborn little fucker.

“You know it has to be me,” Herc tries to reason with him. “I know Striker and she knows me.”

“I can still do it,” Chuck insists. “I pilot the left side anyway.” He jiggles his broken right arm a little for emphasis, but seems to recognize the error of his ways a second too late as pain spikes through him, tension ratcheting up his spine.

Herc looks over, exasperation and anxiety at war on his face. Raleigh shuts his mouth and stays firmly out of the feud because he’s no idiot, but Mako weakens against his pleading eyes and steps in.

“With your injured arm, you do not possess the mobility required to pilot Striker,” she says. “You would endanger both yourself and your co-pilot.” Her eyes gravitate to the floor in deference, but her tone is unrelenting.

Chuck wilts. His own safety is inconsequential, apparently, but if he caused his father’s death…

Raleigh knows exactly what Chuck is experiencing, can feel it as strongly as if they were in the drift together.

A strange, stray desire floods through him. What would it be like, he wonders? To be in the drift with Chuck, to live and breathe _inside_ Chuck. The idea sends pleasant sparks of heat down Raleigh’s spine, but this is _so_ not the time, and he shakes it off guiltily.

“Fuck,” Chuck says, the pitch of his voice going thready. He opens his mouth to say something, shuts it. Looks around, all quiet desperation. Then he turns on his heel and jogs away, Max trotting at his side.

Herc, at a loss, cards his hand through his hair. He starts after Chuck.

“Wait,” Raleigh says. “Let me.”

“Thanks, but – I’m his father,” Herc says.

“Exactly,” says Raleigh.

Herc stops. Pauses.

And sighs.

 

 

Raleigh finds Chuck sitting on the edge of Striker’s loading platform, feet dangling, with Max tucked against his side.

Chuck looks up without much surprise when Raleigh settles down next to him. “Thought it’d be Mako,” he says dully.

“We’re doing Good Cop, Bad Cop,” Raleigh says.

Chuck’s eyebrows furrow. “And you’re the… Good Cop?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Raleigh says, then stops and considers. “Okay, maybe we’re doing Bad Cop, Tough Love Cop.”

“Great,” Chuck says, but there’s a faint smile playing on his lips.

Raleigh gives him a minute, then opens his mouth.

Chuck cuts him off. “Can you just – not? I know what you’re going to say. I know it has to be him, and that he’ll be saving the whole fucking world _if_ by some miraculous chance it works out. That doesn’t make this any easier.”

“I know,” Raleigh says quietly.

“No, you don’t know,” Chuck says, hysteria causing his voice to soar and crack. “You think you know, but you don’t.”

“My brother–”

Chuck laughs, “ _Exactly_. Your brother.”

“He died saving people,” Raleigh says hotly.

“Right. And if, before going on that last mission, you had known he was going to die in the attempt, would you just let it happen?” Chuck gestures in a wide arc, as if to encompass the vast, overwhelming loss Raleigh still feels every time he thinks of his brother, five years later. “It’s one thing to see them die on the job, but would you be okay telling your brother goodbye? So long, it’s been great, see you on the other side?”

Raleigh has no words.

Chuck hitches a breath, eyes shining. “If you had the choice, how the hell can you even _pretend_ you’d take the moral high road?”

Raleigh looks down at his shoes. “Because he’s my brother, and I love him, and part of that is allowing him the dignity of his own choices.”

Chuck bites his lip.

“But,” Raleigh says lowly, “that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be the hardest fucking thing in the world.”

Chuck cries, at that.

Raleigh wishes the drift weren’t just intended to share the neural load of the Jaeger. He wishes he could drift with Chuck, if just to share some of the burden of his own mind.

 

 

Before they go, Raleigh sees Chuck and Herc exchange words, stilted but sincere. He smiles, starts to turn away.

Then Chuck sees him. “Raleigh,” he calls.

Raleigh turns back.

Chuck strides him, claps his shoulder with his good hand. “You look out for him, and her.” He frowns as he looks at Mako, her steady hands, her worried eyes. Then he turns back and meets Raleigh’s gaze. “And yourself. I know you’re a has-been and you haven’t fought since the 1900s, but… I can think of worse people, to watch my father’s back.”

Raleigh almost kisses him right there. Thinks about it, but –

“Becket! You’re up!” Tendo calls.

Chuck squeezes his shoulder, nods once, and returns to his father’s side.

Raleigh, after one last selfish moment of watching Chuck, goes to climb into Gipsy.

Maybe it’s better that he didn’t kiss Chuck. After all, now he has something to come back for.

 

 

After it’s all over, after being cleared by medical and wading his way through the crowd of celebrating revelers, Raleigh finds Chuck in his room, sitting on the bed. His eyes are red.

Raleigh offers him the extra bottle of beer he’s carrying.

“Thanks,” Chuck says, accepting it. He doesn’t open it, though, just picks at the label.

Raleigh almost tells him that Herc was a great man who died nobly, but remembers how he felt when people used to say the same thing about Yancy, and shuts his fucking mouth. “It didn’t hurt,” he says instead.

“I know,” Chuck says. “The bomb… It was so fast, he didn’t feel anything.”

“That’s something.”

“Yeah,” Chuck says, nodding. It looks like it’s taking him a tremendous amount of effort to keep his face from twisting up. “Yeah.”

Raleigh sits at the foot of the bed. “There’s nothing he wouldn’t have done for you.”

“I’m happy,” Chuck says, abruptly.

Raleigh blinks.

“I’m… It’ll take me a while to process what happened to him, but for right now, I’m just going to be happy it’s over. Can you let me do that?” Chuck asks. Raleigh looks into his eyes and sees what he’s not saying – _is this okay? Am I allowed to be happy? Does this make me a terrible person_?

“Of course,” Raleigh says emphatically. “Fuck, can you even believe it? No more Kaiju. No more alarms at four o’clock in the morning telling us to go risk our asses for fuckers who don’t appreciate it.”

“No more politicians telling us that everything we did for them doesn’t matter anymore,” Chuck shoots back.

“No more Jaegers,” Raleigh says. He has mixed feelings on that one.

Chuck nods. A comfortable silence settles.

“We never got to drift together,” Chuck says abruptly.

Raleigh’s gaze snaps to his.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Chuck says, flushing all the way to the tips of his ears. It’s the cutest goddamn thing. “It’s just, I kind of… wanted to? Towards the end, right? Just to see what it was like, I guess.” He rubs the back of his neck.

“Me too,” Raleigh admits with a low chuckle.

Chuck relaxes minutely.

“But it’s too late now,” Raleigh says, regretful.

Chuck looks away. His eyes go distant and dim in a way Raleigh recognizes, all too well. “It’s alright. Wouldn’t feel right to pilot one without my father, anyway.”

Raleigh thinks back to his first time inside Gipsy since Yancy died, and swallows hard. “No,” he agrees.

“So now we’ll never see what it’s like, yeah, to be inside each other’s heads.” Chuck says, trying and failing to seem nonchalant. “It’s a shame.”

“You know…” Raleigh starts. His heart starts thumping hard, but he ignores it, because he’s faced down far scarier things than this, surely. “There’s other ways.”

Chuck turns to him, head tilted to the side in question. “To drift?”

“To connect with someone else,” Raleigh clarifies. “To feel what I’m feeling.”

Chuck blinks.

Sometimes, Raleigh forgets how young he is, the boy who was raised in war and never truly knew peace. Raleigh never was good at the art of euphemisms anyway, always too much of a blue-collar boy for classy shit like that.

He rolls his eyes. “For me to be inside you, so to speak.”

Chucks lips go slack, his jaw dropping. His flush, having almost completely receded, returns with a vengeance. He stares.

Raleigh, feeling profoundly foolish, ducks his head. “Just a thought,” he mutters.

And then…

The way Chuck kisses, you’d think he’d been dreaming about doing this for as long as Raleigh has.

 

 

For some reason, Raleigh expected to be in charge here. In retrospect, that was dumb.

Chuck tears off his clothes with such force Raleigh’s a little afraid for his junk, but the red, raw scrape of fingernails down his stomach makes his head drop back onto the bed, any words of concern replaced by a hoarse moan.

Chuck is a wildfire, a demon, mouthing at his neck while the fingers of his good hand wrap around Raleigh and pump him quickly to full hardness, almost too tight, twisting his wrist at the end of every stroke.

Even with all the time Raleigh spent thinking about this, he never pictured Chuck as a biter, but that was before his skin was littered with red half-moons from his neck to his thighs.

He loves that. Loves that it’s not like he imagined. Loves that Chuck is an unknown being made real.

It’s a thought that makes him buck up into Chuck’s hand, curling his hand around Chuck’s neck to yank him into a sloppy, bruising kiss.

This is real.

 

 

He also didn’t imagine Chuck quite so _bendy_. That’s a fucking sweet surprise too.

Raleigh’s balls-deep inside him, and still Chuck is a living flame under his hands. Raleigh wonders what it’d be like to tie him down. To still his writhing, gag his filthy mouth, get him wild and desperate before giving him exactly what he wanted.

That’s an idea he’s coming back to later, for sure.

For now, he cradles Chuck’s lower back in one hand, uses it to angle him just right, and slides in, so slowly.

“Raleigh, shit,” Chuck hisses, digging his fingernails into his back, leaving long scratches that prickle in the cool air.

Raleigh chuckles.

“What?” Chuck asks, eyes narrowing.

“It’s nothing. Just, I love the way you used to say my name. Raleigh.” Raleigh twists his voice, trying to hit the right blend of mocking and insincere, but he can’t do it like Chuck did. “ _Ra_ leigh.”

Chuck rolls his eyes so hard he probably strains something. “You’re such a tool.”

“Oh, is that so?” Raleigh asks, enjoying himself. He slides in, slow and easy, hips rocking in and out in a smooth grind. “I’m the tool. _I’m_ the tool. _Hansen_.” He tries again for that tone of utmost derision, but he’s still not quite there.

“Yes, you are,” Chuck says. He tries to glare, but it’s weak, and a few seconds later he gives in and smiles. “You really are, _Ra_ leigh.”

Raleigh laughs from sheer delight, the sound echoing in the room off the metal walls.

 

 

Chuck calls him a has-been, and old-timer, ancient, decrepit, any derogatory term he can think of, doing his damnedest to bait Raleigh into putting his back into it.

Raleigh doesn’t fall for it, though, keeps up his even, teasing pace until they’re both slick all over with sweat and he’s got Chuck quivering with every roll of his hips.

And then Chuck says, “C’mon, you jackass, I thought you were gonna drift with me.”

Raleigh is surprised into stopping. “It’s not actually the same, dude."

“I know that,” Chuck says with audible contempt. “But it’s the closest we’re ever gonna get. You’re inside me, yeah? Now make me feel it.”

And that, in the end, is what breaks him.

 

 

He’s fucking Chuck hard, forcing little hitches of breath from his mouth with every thrust. Chuck’s bent nearly double on the bed, legs tight around Raleigh’s waist, and the words that are coming out of his mouth –

Raleigh’s never heard anyone talk like that before.

Raleigh has his fingers laced through the fingers of Chuck’s good hand, keeping it pinned to the bed beside his head. Call him crazy, but there is a connection here, not like the drift but just as good, just as deep. When Chuck turns his head and brushes his lips over the pulse in Raleigh’s wrist, Raleigh doesn’t need to see inside his head to know that Chuck’s in just as deep as he is, not that either of them would ever admit it.

 _That’s_ their drift. Not having to say things.

Knowing them anyway.

“C’mon, harder, you lazy fuck,” Chuck taunts, rolling his hips up to meet Raleigh in perfect rhythm. “I want to feel you in the morning.”

“Easy to say when I’m the one doing all the work,” Raleigh grunts. He pulls out, repositions, _slams_ into Chuck, rough and fast and unrelenting.

The noise that Chuck makes, right there – that’s a victory if Raleigh’s ever felt one.

 

 

In the end, Raleigh comes first, which is – embarrassing, to say the least. He isn’t sure when it became a competition, but Chuck was a dirty cheater and he was sticking to that statement.

Seriously, how was he supposed to resist, with Chuck clenching around him and looking up at him with that goddamn dirty half-lidded gaze and whispering his name all low and breathy, saying shit like, “Shit, you’re a Jaeger pilot, not some delicate fuckin’ girl, I know you can do better than this,” and, “C’mon, _Ra_ leigh, fuck me like you fought me."

How the hell is he supposed to resist _that_?

When he comes, his mind goes totally blank, just sparks and fissures and flares. Then, absurdly, his first thought is, _That must be what Gipsy feels like when she empties her plasma clip_.

It’s a dumb thought. Chuck has that effect on him.

“C’mon, come on,” Chuck begs, hips jerking up with no rhythm, his hard cock rubbing against Raleigh’s abdomen. “Get me _off,_ you lazy fucker.”

“You never stop bitching, do you?” Raleigh rasps out, wrapping a clumsy hand around Chuck’s cock and stripping it hard and fast. “Someday, I’m gonna fuck your throat and shut you up like you deserve.”

Unsurprisingly, that’s when Chuck comes, turning his head and sinking his teeth into Raleigh’s wrist as he spills hot and wet over his fingers.

His issues are so transparent. Raleigh loves the surprises, sure, but he also loves that he feels like he knows Chuck.

That he feels like Chuck might know him too.

 

 

After, when they’re lying, sweat-sticky and panting, on the bed, Chuck rolls up onto his side. He props his head up on his elbow. “I want to go surfing,” he says.

Raleigh inwardly marvels at his refraction time, and outwardly says, “Muh?”

Not one of his better moments, for sure.

Chuck smirks, but for once passes up the opportunity for mockery. “ _Sur-fing_ ,” he repeats, two separate syllables of emphasis. “You in?”

“I don’t know how,” Raleigh says.

“I’ll teach you.”

Raleigh looks at his hands. “I’m not sure I…”

“Do you know how long it’s been since I was on a beach outside of a Jaeger?” Chuck sets his jaw, eyes stormy. “It’s time.”

It’s been 12 years for Raleigh. Twelve years since he was able to look at an ocean and not imagine a Kaiju emerging from the depths, its gaping maw open to swallow the world whole. And less than a day since he was walking along the seafloor, watching Chuck’s father die.

The ocean is vast and powerful, and he isn’t ready to try to tame it.

Chuck shoves at his shoulder, reading his thoughts from his face. “Bring Mako. She’ll ground you. I’ll bring Max.” He bumps their foreheads together. “You gotta ride the wave, _Raleigh_.” The name is rife with his old disdain, and Raleigh is simultaneously charmed and irritated.

“Fine,” he says.

He doesn’t tell Chuck the reason he agrees, but he’s still thinking about it days later when he and Mako are in Sydney shopping for swimsuits.

It’s just, well… Riding the wave, getting back on the horse, standing up after you’ve been beaten down?

It’s something Yancy would have said.


End file.
